As knowledge partners for this year’s OTM Forum, we are back with a round-up of exciting panels and discussion. OTM Forum is a knowledge-sharing initiative that brings together India and Asia’s most influential travel leaders on one stage.

We are curating a panel on Conversational AI and Chatbots in Travel: Benefits & Best Practices featuring Aakrit Vaish, Co-Founder at Haptik and Chetan Kumar, Strategic Partnership, WhatsApp.

Another panel, we’re hosting is Holidays and Experiences: The next great untapped market in online travel? The panel includes some of the leading names in India’s Holidays, Tours & Activities segment. On the panel, we’ll have Anirudh Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Tripoto, Chitra Gurnani, CEO, Thrillophilia, Vaibhav Sisinty, Head of Marketing – India, Klook and Rupendra Yadav who is the Chief Business Officer – Holidays at MakeMyTrip.

The forum is being organized in Mumbai from 3rd to 5th February at Bombay Exhibition Centre.

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The Ministry of Tourism of Republic of Indonesia (MoTRI) signed a strategic agreement with MakeMyTrip to promote Indonesian Tourism in India. Under this strategic partnership, MakeMyTrip and MoTRI will actively run campaigns across MakeMyTrip platforms to endorse tourism to Bali, Jakarta and other regions in Indonesia.

MakeMyTrip will launch a 360-degree online campaign on its platforms, external websites and social media to promote tourism to Indonesia. Through this association MakeMyTrip will aim to tap additional footfall of Indian tourists in Indonesia, this year.

Rajesh Magow, Co-Founder and CEO-India, MakeMyTrip said, “We greatly look forward to working with the Ministry of Tourism of Republic of Indonesia to build the tourism momentum in the region. Indonesia, especially Bali is among the top favourite international destination among Indian travellers and this association will help us tap into the massive potential. We will be providing enhanced travel offerings to encourage travellers to explore the beautiful country of Indonesia.”

Speaking on the partnership, Nia Niscaya, Deputy Minister of Tourism Marketing, Ministry of Tourism of Indonesia, said, “We are delighted to further our partnership with MakeMyTrip, a leading player in the online travel segment and are confident that this association will help us expand our reach in the Indian market. Footfall of Indian travellers holidaying in Indonesia has skyrocketed in the last couple of years. The Ministry is taking additional steps in order to get the incremental growth from India”.

There has been a constant rise in the visits made by Indians year on year. Basis the bookings observed on MMT Platforms, there has been a significant rise of over 125 % in overall bookings to Indonesia during 2017.

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MakeMyTrip has invested an undisclosed amount in Bengaluru-based Bitla Software.

Bitla Software is a travel-focused technology provider with SaaS, cloud and mobile-based solutions to help customers expand their businesses.

The company’s technologies are widely used domestically and internationally by bus operators, bus GDSs, online ticketing portals, hoteliers, holiday tour operators and cargo and logistics companies.

It will use the latest fundraise to rapidly develop and expand its suite of travel focused technology products, said Dasharatham Bitla, Founder & CEO, Bitla Software.

“We look to foster faster innovations in order to accelerate growth in these travel segments. Our latest investment in Bitla Software is aimed at providing an extensive suite of technology products and solutions for the bus and hotel supplier ecosystem which will further strengthen our market position,” said Deep Kalra, chairman of MMT.

MMT Chairman Deep Kalra. Image source: Moneycontrol

This is firm’s sixth investment in the tech space. MMT’s bus ticketing business has witnessed a strong momentum, with a jump of 55 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter. Post its merger with Ibibo, the MakeMyTrip group, which is listed on Nasdaq, has been spending significantly on customer inducement and acquisition.

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Goibibo has launched a new WhatsApp integrated solution, allowing its users to sign-in to Goibibo on mobile web via WhatsApp. This first-of-its-kind Whatsapp login authentication will help mobile web users to Log In without needing to remember password, keying in OTP or Mobile Number – rendering a convenient, seamless experience.

Anshuman Bapna, Chief Product Officer, Goibibo said, “We are a mobile-first company and we want to leverage the mobile ecosystem to its fullest to make online travel booking experience even more convenient. Given the ubiquitous usage of Whatsapp among Indians, it was a natural choice for us to build this feature to help people access the platform without the fuss of remembering complex passwords and punching in OTPs.”

This new feature will help Goibibo further enhance qualitative services for its consumers who have come to expect ease and superior user experience. Goibibo currently offers features like seat and meal selection, auto check-in and hotel reviews and images collection through WhatsApp built-in Android APIs.

Indian startups are now increasingly using social messaging app WhatsApp to do business, riding on its huge user base. WhatsApp has nearly 200 million active users in India, as of February 2017, accounting for 16% of its global user base, according to Statista, an online research portal.

The WhatsApp flight seat selection feature introduced by Goibibo in January this year was for flight booking and seat selection and gave travellers the ability to choose their desired flight seat just on Whatsapp.

In a separate development, WhatsApp announced that it is launching its first revenue generating product in India for enterprises to interact directly with customers which will debut with Goibibo’s parent company MakeMyTrip.

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Online travel portal MakeMyTrip has announced that the company has become a ‘Direct Connect Partner’ for Lufthansa Group in India. The Direct Connect cooperation between Lufthansa Group and MakeMyTrip gives customers access to innovative and even more competitive flight products.

Direct Connect is a distribution functionality that enables partners to use the Lufthansa Group’s API (application programming interface) for a direct access to the airlines’ inventories and rich content. The API software facilitates the travel partner to provide an enhanced customized offer for third parties.

Wolfgang Will and Rajesh Magow. Image source: Travelmail

MakeMyTrip will be able to offer Lufthansa Group Airlines’ differentiated travel content to consumers with personalized flight products. Amongst other services, passengers can use the platform to conveniently purchase flight tickets and other services from Lufthansa German Airlines, SWISS, Brussels Airlines and Austrian Airlines without paying the 16 Euro Distribution Cost Charge applied to bookings made via traditional sales channels.

“This Direct Connect Solution with MakeMyTrip is an incredible milestone in addressing the new-generation of travellers”, said Wolfgang Will, Senior Director Sales South Asia for Lufthansa Group Airlines. “MakeMyTrip as a Direct Connect Partner of Lufthansa Group in India is a key partner for our future developments in distribution.”

“At MakeMyTrip, we are always looking to provide best content to our users to help make them best travel decisions. We are delighted to partner with Lufthansa and take another step in providing customised and more relevant offerings to better serve Indian travellers”, shared Rajesh Magow, Co-founder & CEO India, MakeMyTrip

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India’s largest OTA MakeMyTrip has announced that the company is raising USD 330 million through share sale to undisclosed investors as well as Ctrip and Naspers’ arm MIH Internet. It has entered into definitive share purchase agreements for a placement of its ordinary shares. This is expected to generate gross proceeds of USD 165 million. The company will issue 4,583,334 ordinary shares in the aggregate to investors at a price of $36 per ordinary share.

Along with this, MakeMyTrip also entered into share purchase agreements with Ctrip for the issuance of its ordinary shares to Ctrip and MIH Internet for the issuance of the Company’s Class B convertible ordinary shares to MIH. The transactions will generate an additional $165 million of gross proceeds for MakeMyTrip. It will issue 916,666 ordinary shares to Ctrip at a price of $36 per ordinary share and 3,666,667 Class B Shares to MIH at a price of $36 per Class B Share. The Class B Shares issued to MIH will be convertible into ordinary shares on a one-to-one basis.

The transactions with Ctrip and MIH Internet and the placement are expected to raise USD 330 million and expected to close around coming Friday (May 5, 2017). MakeMyTrip plans to use the funds for business expansion, strategic investments, technology and product development, marketing and promotions, working capital and general corporate purposes.

Ctrip invested USD 180 million in MakeMyTrip early last year and after the merger with Ibibo Group, held 10 percent of the combined entity. Naspers and Tencent held 40 percent of the combined entity after the merger last year. It was recently reported that MakeMyTrip is eyeing more investments in India including an investment in budget hotel aggregator FabHotels. Moreover, MakeMyTrip has previously expressed its intention to go bullish on online hotel booking. Expect more such activity by MakeMyTrip as it tries to grab a bigger piece of India’s travel market.

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It was reported previously that MakeMyTrip is keeping an eye out on smaller companies to further strengthen its position in the hotel space. The merger with GoIbibo brought two rivals with different strengths together and as the integration of the two approaches completion, they are out again looking at ways to grab a bigger piece of the online travel space in India.

It is now reported that MakeMyTrip is looking at investing in the budget hotel aggregation space and is considering FabHotels for the same. The segment gained popularity in the year 2015 after OYO Rooms raised a large round from Softbank. This was followed by a large number of same or similar models evolving not only in India but in Southeast countries with similar accommodation challenges as well. While the promise was convincing, and at one point it appeared that they will create threat for the budget hotel listings on OTAs, the aggressive race for scale didn’t help. The major OTAs hit back at OYO and Zo by removing their listings citing overlapping listings as a reason.

TOI reports that MakeMyTrip was involved in conversations with FabHotels and Treebo Hotels and may be finalising an investment in FabHotels. Founded in 2014, FabHotels operates in the same space as Oyo Rooms and lists 19 cities on its website. MakeMyTrip has its own series of quality budget listings called Value+ GoIbibo introduced GoStays. It will be interesting to see how the association with FabHotels is leveraged if it indeed goes through while not causing any damage to the current listings.

Treebo recently stopped listing on the two OTAs claiming that they were charging much higher commissions compared to their international counterparts and that wasn’t sustainable for Treebo. It is possible that together they could look at the option of listing FabHotels partner properties exclusively on the two OTAs. The domestic OTAs are also under pressure from international OTAs like Booking.com and Expedia.

MakeMyTrip is also pushing into the alternative accommodation space with RightStay. Along with this, it also has investments in metasearch and review platform HolidayIQ and holiday package marketplace GoFro.

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In what could possibly be one of the biggest developments in the online travel ecosystem of India, two of the leading OTAs have announced to combine their businesses. MakeMyTrip has said that it would buy rival ibibo group to capture a large share of the fast growing online travel space. The transaction would combine the two under MakeMyTrip (NASDAQ: MMYT) creating one of the leading travel groups in India.

The deal covers all brands of the Naspers and Tencent backed ibibo group that include Goibibo, Redbus, Rightstay and Ryde. It is reported that MakeMyTrip has agreed to buy ibibo’s travel businesses for USD 720 million in stock.

After this development, MakeMyTrip founder Deep Kalra will continue to be the group chief executive and executive chairman of MakeMyTrip. Rajesh Magow will continue to be the CEO India of MakeMyTrip. Ashish Kashyap, founder and CEO of ibibo group, will join MakeMyTrip as co-founder and President of the organisation.

“Today’s announcement is a significant step forward for the rapidly growing travel industry in India. We expect this deal to create an even more scalable business with the expertise to transform the booking experience for Indian travellers. I am delighted to be leading such a strong team in our next chapter of high-growth in this dynamic industry,” said Deep Kalra, chairman and Group chief executive of MakeMyTrip in a statement.

Naspers and Tencent will be issued new shares in MakeMyTrip. Upon closing of the transaction, they will own 40% stake in the combined entity and contribute proportional working capital. Ctrip will have 10% stake in the combined entity.

Source: Reuters

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Anshuman Bapna is a famous personality in India’s travel startup ecosystem for all the right reasons, from the interesting things Mygola did every now and then to the quirky video announcing the acquisition by MakeMyTrip. Since the acquisition, he has been inducing startup like agility in the travel booking giant working as Chief Product Officer. A while back at the TiE Travel Marketing Summit 2016, he shared some insights from the mine of booking data MakeMyTrip has and also some learnings from the Mygola days. Here are the highlights:

Anshuman Bapna, Chief Product Office, MakeMyTrip

Don’t forget the desktop yet

There is no denying the fact that mobile is increasingly becoming the tool of choice for travellers to get inspired and even book in most cases. However, the conversions on desktop still continue to run high and that isn’t something that can be ignored. Travel is often a cross device purchase which is why the desktop continues to hold relevance and businesses should account for that.

Age divides platforms

Another interesting insight Anshuman shared was that while a very significant fraction of new users were coming to MakeMyTrip through mobile, they weren’t very loyal. The desktop users had a tendency to stick around for longer when compared to mobile users. Younger users are on mobile while relatively older ones are more biased towards desktop.

Travellers are spontaneous

The hotel category has exploded in domestic market and the online penetration has gone up significantly over the past 18 months. More travellers are planning last minute which means more than a third of hotel bookings on MMT are taking place on the same day. Anshuman shared that MakeMyTrip considered adding new tools to cater to last minute bookings only to realise that their mobile web version was already serving as one offering good conversion for same day bookings.

Sell to the right audience

MakeMyTrip has been promoting through different channels including TV commercials. On observing that large fraction of their users belong to the 18-35 year bracket with most of the new user acquisitions happening in 18-24 segment, they tweaked their marketing campaigns. Which is why they brought in younger movie stars to represent the brand in TVCs to connect better with the audience.

Experiment for quick growth

He also shared how the Mygola team used to list down sets of experiments for different marketing channels. They will then try 40-45 marketing experiments in less than a year, draw inferences, fine tune the strategies and repeat the process. According to him, content only has 30 percent contribution in getting the word out, rest is distribution and that is what one should focus on.

Marketing and technology aren’t exclusive

Recalling some of the experiments at Mygola, he emphasised that leveraging technology in marketing can produce great results. At one point, the Mygola team built a basic program to simulate conversations to help people posting travel queries on Twitter. As this picked up, they were getting more than half of the sign ups from Twitter which is a big number for a single social platform.

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Former Chief Technology Officer of Snapdeal, Amitabh Misra, plan to bring his e-commerce place experience to his newly planned travel portal Go Fro which would cater to leisure travellers and offer international holiday packages to travellers.

“Building a services marketplace for leisure travel is way harder than building a marketplace for physical goods since it is highly complex. Supporting such platforms needs much more complex technology,” said Misra. The former technology officer had been working in a stealth mode on this project from his newly found start-up Bona Vita Technologies.

The portal covers six destinations- Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Mauritius and Dubai and has plans to pan out to more than 50 destinations that rule the leisure travel market by 90% according to Misra.

Go Fro currently comprises of about 70 individuals who are mainly engineers and plans to aggregate the most fragmented vertical in travel sector; leisure travelling.

The portal integrates other features like live assistance for itineraries apart from offering visa and foreign exchange. MakeMyTrip owns majority stakes in Go Fro and had made an initial investment of $5 million last year.

“We are not actively looking at funding right now. But for growth, we will start looking at it three-four months later,” Misra said, adding that funding would completely depend on how well does the portal pick and the traction it gets.

The company would roll out a companion app around the end of this month which would help the traveller through the remaining of the trip. The company would also have a data analytics- driven tool to suggest interesting activities during the traveller’s stay at the destination.

Source: The Hindu Business Line

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